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Pangolins, timid little anteaters that are covered with scales, are being hunted to extinction. Why? Because some humans think their scales can be used as medicine. Pangolin scales are made of keratin, the same stuff that makes fingernails and claws, and they have no more medicinal value than any other fingernails–which is to say, none at all.

Pangolins are gentle, toothless mammals that eat ants with their long, sticky tongues. They are covered with scales (sort of like a walking artichoke) which protect them from predators but not from humans, who simply pick them up to harvest them. Baby pangolins ride, adorably, on their mothers' tails or backs, as shown in the picture here.

A pangolin carries its baby at a Bali zoo, Indonesia, Thursday, June 19, 2014. The pangolin baby was... [+] born on May 31. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Just a few months ago, the CITES organization (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) banned trade in all eight species of pangolin. We can only hope that this blanket ban is not too late. Previously CITES had declared that Asian pangolins were endangered, but had allowed trade in African pangolins, but because the meat is indistinguishable, the limited ban did little to stop the widespread killing of Asian pangolins. Just before the CITES meeting, Annamiticus (@annamiticus) reported that in the first nine months of 2016, 18,670 tons of pangolin scales from 19 countries had been seized from smugglers, mostly in Hong Kong. And that's just the amount that was stopped; many more tons doubtless slipped through.

I'm the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. From 2005-2011 I was the Horvitz

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I'm the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. From 2005-2011 I was the Horvitz Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining UMD, I was at The Institute for Genomic Research, where I sequenced the genomes of many bacteria, including those used in the 2001 anthrax attacks. At TIGR I was part of the Human Genome Project and the co-founder of the influenza virus sequencing project (which is when I first learned of the anti-vaccine movement). My research group develops software for DNA sequence analysis, and our (free) software is used by scientific laboratories around the globe. I did my B.A. and M.S. at Yale University, and my Ph.D. at Harvard University, and I have published over 250 scientific papers. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@stevensalzberg1), or visit my lab page, http://salzberg-lab.org.